Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) played a key role in shutting down a Chinese counterfeiter who was making knockoff versions of Salvatore Ferragamo S.p.A.’s Gancini belts, according to a company announcement Tuesday (April 26).
The CCU and Ferragamo reported the counterfeiter to Market Supervision and Administration (MSA) authorities in Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province, China, leading to an investigation and warehouse raid, where officials found hundreds of counterfeit belts and buckle accessories, the announcement says.
“Amazon is grateful for the collaboration from Ferragamo and the MSA in protecting customers from these counterfeit products,” said Kebharu Smith, head of Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit, in the company announcement.
“This should serve as a reminder that bad actors will be held accountable, as Amazon collaborates with both brands and law enforcement agencies around the world to stop inauthentic products from being sold across the retail industry,” he said.
In February 2021, Amazon and Ferragamo jointly filed two lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, alleging a group was using Ferragamo’s registered trademarks without authorization, to “deceive customers about the authenticity and origin of the products and the affiliation with Ferragamo.”
The company removed more than 22,000 counterfeit products from social media platforms and more than 130,000 listings of counterfeit products after they implemented several offline and online anti-counterfeiting measures.
Salvatore Ferragamo also targeted China’s brick-and-mortar stores in 2021, leading to the seizure of almost 450,000 counterfeit products worldwide. Amazon invested more than $700 million and employed more than 10,000 people to protect its stores from fraud, counterfeit and abuse in 2020, when it launched the CCU.
It includes former federal prosecutors, former law enforcement agents, investigators and data analysts.
Related: Marketplaces Mull How to Combat $464B of Counterfeit Goods
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that pirated and counterfeit products make up 2.5% of world trade, or $464 billion per year, with COVID-19 driving significant growth in the online supply of counterfeits.
The proposed Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces (INFORM) Consumers Act, which was introduced in October, would require online marketplaces to collect and verify business information from sellers who have made at least 200 sales in a year that together are worth $5,000 or more, and platforms would have to provide customers with a way to contact sellers who have more than $20,000 in annual gross revenue after making a purchase.
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